“’Kay,” she says easily, patting my arm reassuringly. “I’ll close the shop tonight.”
With a nod, I disappear back inside. Definitely not with another furtive trawl of Blake’s Instagram, or wondering about what might have happened next if I’d stayed longer in his trailer.
…
Sunday promises to be more offensively hot than Saturday. Because I live alone and there’s no one to judge me, I decide to get ice cream for breakfast. I venture to the nearby corner shop, safely away from the location of the filming. All of my Blake-related lusting and angsting last night kept me up late, and even with the smother of the day, I slept in.
Now, chocolate ice cream melts on my tongue.
I go to the coffee shop for a flat white to bring back. My friend Lily’s gotten me addicted to them, with all of her trips to America and savvy to the latest things, right down to coffee fashion.
Even though Barnes Books is closed today to the public, it doesn’t mean I get the day off work. It’s just a different sort of work. Ice cream down and some coffee in me, I’m as ready as it gets to face the day. I turn on the radio and there’s a countdown of the top songs of the week. They’re up to number seventeen, a track from London’s Halfpenny Rise, a friend’s band, a great showing from Soho.
There’s far too much hoovering of area rugs with my vacuum that spits more than sucks. Dusting brings a barrage of sneezes after a thorough once-over of everything with my wool duster, a splurge in the cleaning product department. The duster’s from a foray into a zero-waste shop that Ryan took me into once. I didn’t have the heart to come away empty-handed with all of their environmental initiatives and earnest looks.
Once the work out in the heat of the afternoon finally wraps up, and another cold shower and a takeaway sandwich later, I sit down for the bookkeeping. Which amounts to me tracking things in a written ledger like my mum taught me, and her dad taught her. It’s straightforward enough, since I don’t exactly have high volume sales in the bookshop. Not like Foyles or Waterstones or the actual Barnes and Noble.
I go to the kitchen for water, only to find out that the wobbly faucet has only become wobblier and is now leaky. Fuck. I dig around under the sink for my toolbox.
Scowling, I fish out a wrench and try to tighten the fastener around the neck of the faucet. I’m no builder, but by God, I’ll fix this.
With a final turn of the wrench and a metallic wallop on the side for good measure, I turn on the tap. Water squirts out the side in an alarming manner, from a place water has no business to be spouting.
“Motherfucker.”
After shutting the faucet off, I loft the wrench with more force than needed into the toolbox. There’s a satisfying clatter of metal.
Seizing on the duct tape, I tear off a length and start winding it viciously around the faucet.
Standing back, I look at my haphazard taping job and try the tap again. Water pours as and when it should. Triumphant, I sit down at the kitchen table with a fresh glass of water. Successful repair completed. Take that, shit plumbing.
I trace condensation on my glass with a fingertip, leaning the back of my head against the wall beneath a framed poster of the Sex Pistols, bought by my dad for my mum a few lifetimes back. Supposedly it was some private joke between them that I didn’t want to know. But it’s still there. And even after he passed, it’s left up because neither one of us has the heart to take it down.
When I go back to the office to shut everything down properly for the afternoon, I can’t help another quick peek at Blake Sinclair’s Instagram, quickly becoming a new reward for every task I finish this weekend. Today, he’s shirtless in Hyde Park, all gleaming teeth and impressive chest. Behind him, the sky is a stunning blue with a filter that brings out his eyes.
Gulping, I shut down the app quickly. Even so, I can still see his incredible body, his defined muscles—and still taste our urgent kiss.
Chapter Five
Monday’s sticky. The heatwave shows no sign of letting up. A fan moves the air around in an illusion of coolness. The front door’s propped open in case a breeze shows up. A sunbeam spills in on the red area rug, highlighting my main table with a colorful display showing books of note.
A win for adulting the right way, I skip the ice cream this morning in favor of pastries from the café.
We’re onto day five of the heatwave. I’m starting to crack.
I’ve given up on trousers and their full-leg coverage, perfect for disguising my stick legs that would look far better on a sapling. The heat’s made me nauseous. Fewer clothes are necessary. Now, I’m down to a rumpled pair of sage-green cargo shorts, found in the depths of my chest of drawers, and a short-sleeved linen shirt. Far too exposed for my liking, I’m compensating by hiding behind the safety of the front counter with my laptop while Gemma stocks the bookshelves.
Ordinarily, Monday morning would be fairly quiet, but it’s bustling like Saturday. Is it because of tourists? Filming? Summer students? Who can say, but I won’t question it. Today, no one claims to buy books based on aesthetics. Everything goes surprisingly smoothly, which should have been my first clue to not let my guard down.
Then, a courier arrives.
They usually wheel in stacks of boxes filled with bestsellers listed on the book charts, but not today. Instead, the delivery man walks in with something bright in his arm—a stunning, intimidatingly large arrangement of flowers: pale pink peonies, blue cornflowers, a smattering of reddish something-or-others from the daisy family. Straw flowers? I have no idea. It’s wrapped in tissue and kraft paper, a satin ribbon around the middle, set in a beautiful stoneware vase. It looks terribly expensive and posh. Somewhere, a bride’s been robbed, I’m sure of it.
He looks around curiously before making a beeline to the front desk. And me.
“I’ve got a delivery.” He peers through his bifocals at the slip of paper in his other hand, gleaming faintly with perspiration. “For Barnes Books. I’m looking for Aubrey.”
How a luxury bouquet has ended up in Barnes Books defies all sense of reason. I give the man a wary look. “I’m Aubrey Barnes.”
